Nazi concentration camp visit helps Soldiers better understand Latvian culture

RIGA, Latvia - The Nazi Concentration Camp just outside the city of Riga, Latvia was the focus of Saber Strike Cultural Day for members of the Michigan National Guard.

Cultural day is incorporated into the training for the multinational training exercise to allow Soldiers and Airmen to better understand and identify with the people of Latvia beyond the training conducted with Latvian Soldiers. Typically on cultural day Soldiers will visit "Old Town" Riga, to experience the historic capitol city, but this group sought to understand the deeper history of the old culture in this young nation. This is why they visited the Salispils camp.

The camp known as Salispils in Latvian, or Kurtenhof in German, was officially a forced work and reeducation camp run by the Third Reich in which thousands of prisoners were worked and starved to death.

Salispils was opened in October of 1941, constructed by prisoners of war from Stalag 350 and Jewish people who were being held in the Jewish ghetto in Riga. Poor living conditions, poor nutrition and severe cold led to many deaths even in the construction of the camp.

Western estimates indicate that 12 thousand prisoners were housed at Salispils Concentration Camp during World War II of which two to three thousand died from prison conditions and hangings. One half of the children who entered the camp perished. In one burial mound outside of the camp the corpses of 632 children were excavated following the war.

The memorial visited by Michigan National Guard Soldiers was designed by Latvian architects under Soviet rule and opened in 1967. In addition to a slanted gate that causes visitors to feel oppression as they enter, there are symbolic statues towering where prisoner barracks once stood. The statues indicate the bonds of those who suffered there: Humbled, Protest, Mother, Solidarity and Unbroken. Each is powerful in its presence. The mother statue moved me the most. As a mother I like to believe I am able to protect my child. In the Mother statue stands a child cringing behind a defiant mother who willingly takes the harshness for her child," said Angela Simpson. She added, she was equally heartbroken by the children's memorial. "I cannot imagine the horror a child must have experienced upon seeing their parents hanged from the improvised gallows. It is not as if there was a grandparent to turn to for comfort, only the coldness of a crude barracks filled with other terrified children."

Bringing the experience together is a metronome that amplifies a human heart-beat that can be heard throughout the camp. There an inscription translates, "people here were murdered because they were innocent."

The "Singing Guitars", often referred to as "the Russian Beatles" had a hit song in the early 1970s about the children who suffered and died there called "Salispils". In the passing generations the memorial has become a popular location for reflection on the human suffering that is inflicted when cultures fail to understand one another.

Mission accomplished. This group of Michigan Soldiers have benefitted from this Saber Strike cultural day. As Sgt. 1st Class Adam Swager concluded, "The people of Latvia are certainly a resilient people to continue to defiantly maintain their culture in the face of such great adversity.